Tag Archives: Neolithic

Archeologists believe they have uncovered evidence that caves in northern Vietnam were home to prehistoric people 4,000 years ago.
Relics dating back to that time were found in three caves located in Chiem Hoa District, Tuyen Quang Province.

Trinh Nang Chung of the Vietnam Institute of Archaeology led the excavations that led to the finding of relics in Pu Chua Cave of Minh Quang Commune and Ngan and Khi Caves of Phuc Son Commune last July.

Malay Mail, 19 April 2017: Human remains have been found during construction at Guar Kepah in Penang, a known shell midden site that has been investigated previously. The construction in question is actually the gallery site that was to display information from previous excavations! The team from USM is now studying the bones.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the discovery of the Ban Chiang culture in Thailand’s Udon Thani province. This article from the Isaan Record features and interview with Dr Joyce White and her involvement with the site.

Fifty years ago in August, in the village of Ban Chiang near Udon Thani, a visiting American student named Stephen Young tripped over an exposed tree root and fell atop the rim of a clay pot partly buried in the village path. His tumble set into motion two joint Thai-American archaeological expeditions to Ban Chiang in the 1970s that exposed the extent of prehistoric burial sites beneath the village, sites filled with thousands of pieces of pottery and metalwork buried as grave goods by Neolithic and Bronze Age peoples at different times between 4200 and 1800 years ago. The Ban Chiang finds revealed unexpected technological and artistic development among the peoples of the region and challenged prevailing ideas about the prehistory of Southeast Asia.

American archaeologist Dr. Joyce White is the Director of the Ban Chiang project at the University of Pennsylvania Museum in Philadelphia, USA, where she has studied the finds from Ban Chiang since 1976. She is an expert witness for the US Department of Justice in an ongoing antiquities trafficking case that in 2014 resulted in the return of many smuggled Ban Chiang items to Thailand.

A vast cache of prehistoric artifacts and human remains have been unearthed at an archaeological site in the Tainan Science Park, but none offer concrete evidence explaining an age-old mystery: how ancient settlers from China actually reached Taiwan.

Several million cultural artifacts and faunal and botanic remains have been excavated from over 2,000 burial sites in the science park since the archaeological project kicked off in December 1996, according to Academia Sinica, which is overseeing the work.

The artifacts unearthed have been highly similar to those excavated from archaeological sites along the coasts of southeastern China, said Academia Sinica academician Tsang Cheng-hwa (臧振華) when speaking of the award-winning project with local media last month.

Jelajah.com carries a feature on the Neolithic site of Gua Harimau in South Sumatra. Even if you can’t read Indonesian, it’s worth a visit for the pictures – Gua Harimau is the only known painted rock art site on Sumatra, and it features a number of other prehistoric burials.

Neolithic artefacts discovered during the construction of a highway in Taiwan have been revealed, after an excavation programme that started last year. The stone tools and pottery fragments are thought to be around 3,000 years old.

Prehistoric relics make public debut in Miaoli [Link no longer active]
Taiwan Today, 05 March 2015

An assortment of relics recovered from an expressway construction site in northern Taiwan’s Miaoli County were publicly unveiled March 4, shedding new light on Neolithic life on the island.

Comprising everyday items, as well as pottery fragments and stone axes, the 3,000-year-old artifacts were unearthed during a Directorate-General of Highways-commissioned dig starting last October.

According to Archaeo Cultures Co. Ltd., the firm responsible for carrying out the project, the 24,000-square-meter-plus Dianziwo site was discovered in 1993 by a Miaoli local.

A find from China that may have some bearing on Southeast Asia – 4,000-year-old wheat and millet have been found in Yunnan province , further south than originally thought. While the study has yet to be published, the find raises interesting questions about the movement of people from China down and through to mainland Southeast Asia in the Neolithic and the Bronze Age.